


The Precipice

by Galadriel



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Angels, Crisis of Faith, Doubt, Dreams, Kissing, M/M, Magic, Roughness, Senses, Sins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:22:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel/pseuds/Galadriel
Summary: Weary of ceaselessly watching humanity fail, Manny dreams (of John).
Relationships: John Constantine/Manny
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Precipice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, days4daisy! It was such a joy to be able to write some Constantine for you. I love the show (and the comics, of course), and I am still mourning its end. (We needed so much more! It was really starting to find its feet, and I was so looking forward to where they were going to go with it all. The cliffhanger was just cruel.)
> 
> I really hope you enjoy this fic. I've tried to explore Manny and John's dynamic a little more with a dollop of Manny-as-human (again). Hopefully it fits the bill!

Angels didn't dream.

As a rule, and a Heavenly one at that, angels were meant to ceaselessly watch over God's creations, a divine record of every moment since the very first. Watch and wait. And wait. And wait. 

For what, Manny was no longer sure. If the Lord Himself was going to bring about Armageddon, Manny could not foresee what depths of depravity He required from all the crawling things of the earth before He would let loose the Beast to punish the sinners while He called the faithful home. Surely humanity had earned its final cleansing over and over again. 

Surely God saw all of this, saw the creeping of corruption, but perhaps He no longer cared.

Surely the momentary turning of a blind eye, the temporary ceasing of Manny's ceaseless watch did not matter, not even in the truly grand scheme of things. If Manny tired, if he closed his divinely-given eyes to the sin and sacrilege of all the mean beasts that scraped and scrabbled away below his Heavenly home, then that inattention was, at most, the smallest of sins.

That, indeed, was hardly a sin at all.

So perhaps a state of fugue was not such a strange thing. Perhaps a little rest, perhaps following the tendrils of dreaming into a more hopeful world was not such a bad thing. 

Perhaps one angel dreaming was merely one angel who had done his job too well. One angel who was far more attuned to the faults and failures of humanity than all the rest of his brethren. 

And if that angel's dream made space for visions of John Constantine, perhaps that was merely a marker of hope for the redemption of those who had truly Fallen.

Silently, in the void between time and no-time, between the corporeal and the incorporeal, Manny closed his eyes against Creation, and succumbed to sleep.

***

"You're a right bastard, aren't you?" Manny stumbled backward as Constantine's palms connected with his chest, flat and firm and _heavy_ and _shoving_ , no quarter given nor kindness offered. 

The soles of Manny's shoes caught and stuttered, jolting his body as he wobbled, arms flung out, hands reaching out for anything within reach that would stabilize him. His fingers scrabbled for purchase on what felt like a frame, and for one long moment he was as a solid wall set against all the heathen hordes, a rock that would not be moved.

And then, before he knew it, his arms bowed inward as another blow landed, and he was tipping, teetering, reaching out for Constantine, his mouth opening in an 'o' of surprise, something that sounded like blasphemy slipping between his lips. 

"Pick up your feet, you inept idiot." John's fingers curled in Manny's shirt and pulled him upright, steadying even as he continued to push. "It's a fucking landing. You can't even manage a little lip on the ground when you can't float with all the holiest of holies, can you?"

"I-- What?" Manny looked down at the little bump of stone that lined the bottom of the doorway. " _Oh._ " A small wiggle, and he managed to unhook the bottom of his heel from the frame, while John did the rest. He kept his feet as John pushed him further into the building's foyer, knowledge of where they were slowly dawning as the darkness of the doorway resolved into walls of white stone and veined marble, vaulted ceilings and echoing whispers. "John. _John_. What are you doing?" Manny pitched his voice low, reverence for the earthly house of the Lord vibrating through every hushed syllable. "Take your hands off me. This is not the way to behave in a church. Not even for you." 

Constantine laughed, a harsh, discordant noise that set Manny's teeth on edge. "What's the matter? Afraid I'll burst into flames and take you with me?" His grip on Manny's shirt tightened, and he pulled Manny in close, a warm puff of breath ghosting across Manny's cheek. 

Manny felt John's lips brush against the shell of his ear a split second before John murmured, "Are you sure it's _me_ that should be worried about hellfire and damnation? You sure there's no stains on _your_ lily white soul?" 

Manny flushed; a rush of heat heralded the surge of anger that flooded his senses. _How dare some broken-down, rusted-out, damned-a-thousand-times-over warlock accuse one of the Heavenly Host of being any less than pristine?_ Everything that Manny had ever done had been for the greater good. Every choice he had ever made had been in service to a larger, better cause. Every difficult decision, every suspect deal he had made with less-than-moral entities was necessary to pave the way for the reckoning that was to come, and he was filled with the righteous fury of a hundred thousand angelic servants, filled with the inevitability of his purpose, filled with divine justice, and he would strike Constantine down--

He flexed his shoulder blades, ready to unfurl his wings--

\--And nothing happened.

Nothing, that is, except for a loud _smack_ as Manny's back connected with the wall across from the entryway. His upper arm clipped something stony and unyielding halfway up the wall, the impact accompanied by a small sunburst of pain that flared bright before fading into a dull thrum. "Ow! John. _John_! Enough!"

He frowned as the pain drilled one small worry deeper into his mind. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and reached out for his connection to the eternal. 

He was met with a profound and resounding silence. 

_No._

"No. I'm–"

_I'm dreaming._

"That's right." Constantine's smirk reminded Manny of a cat on its ninth life. Self-assured, self-satisfied, and utterly unable to count past eight. "You're just another one of the unwashed masses now. Trapped in a faulty body and as alone as the next wanker." Another tug on his shirt, the cheap fabric rasping against his skin as Constantine laughed and finally let go. He patted Manny's chest. "Have to admit, stripping you of your fancy feathery powers hasn't lost its charms just yet." 

Manny's collar relaxed around his neck, and he breathed in deeply, aware for the first time of the slow strangling of too-tight clothes. His shoes pinched his toes, he noted distantly, and his mouth tasted of chalk and blood as if he'd breathed in ancient dust after biting his tongue. The finiteness of the human form closed in on him, an ill-fitting suit for an immutable creature. "No. No, this isn't happening. I'm _dreaming_. This is a dream." He looked around, searching for the seams that would reveal the edges of the fantasy. A gargoyle glared down on him from a ledge just above his shoulder, making his brow furrow in confusion. _Shouldn't you be outside?_

The expression on John's face was a mixture of something Manny could only guess was amusement tinged with disbelief. "Did you enjoy your dalliance with that little nurse chippy last time you got down in the dirt with the rest of us? Did you? ...Who knew angels would be so driven by their pricks? I suppose it makes sense; all the mystical literature out there makes it seem as if you lot are as smooth as a Barbie." John leered at Manny as he glanced down at the front of his trousers meaningfully. "I suppose that's not the case anymore, is it? I suppose you might even want to thank me."

John smelled of dark smoke and spices; Manny wasn't sure if it was the lingering scent of cigarettes or the stain of a thousand rituals permeating his skin. He couldn't remember a time where John's smell was so _distracting_ , For that matter, he couldn't remember a time when John's proximity was so distracting either. He hesitated, then let go of John's steadying shoulders and gently laid his palms against the lapels of John's trenchcoat. The material was smooth under his fingers, cool and slick and ever-so-slightly wrinkled, gravity pulling down just enough to compensate for the many, many nights it was discarded in a pile beside John's front door.

John was saying something now, something about duty, or desire, or fate. Manny couldn't quite hear him over an increasing buzzing noise in his ears, the sound drowning out all but the cadence of the words that slipped from John's tongue. 

He wondered if John could taste his words, feel the shapes and edges of each sharp syllable, lick the anger and ire off their surfaces. He swallowed heavily, watching John's Adam's apple bob up and down, little prickles of hair betraying how much time had passed since Manny had begun to dream of the church. Of John. Or perhaps it had been no time at all, and Manny's sleeping mind had simply offered up the illusion of time and space, gifting him with a fantasy of dalliance, the temptations of flesh. 

He wondered what it felt like to _taste_ John's words.

Manny blinked as his cock twitched. He didn't realize it would react to close proximity, didn't realize it would react to _John_. The man was infuriating, frustrating, a heretic and a hack, and yet he was trapped here, trapped in his own dream, or trapped by John's cheap trickery, bound to a low-rent warlock who hardly held onto the smallest scraps of faith.

"Oi!" Manny's shoulder banged back into the gargoyle as John shook him, and his breath caught in his throat. "Are you in there, Angel Boy?" 

John's lips were inches from his own, his breath heavy with cloves and something darker, something deeper. Manny wondered if everyone felt this pull when this close to John. Were they pulled in like a moon in orbit, forever bound to circle Constantine, watching and waiting to reflect his light?

Millennia and more made certain that Manny had had his fill of watching and waiting.

_And after all, this was only a dream._

Manny's fingers closed around the trenchcoat's lapels, and it was his turn to do the pushing and pulling, his turn to draw this dream-John in close, gripping the coat as if it were a matter of life and death, pressing his lips to John's own, revelling in the feel of rough, dry lips, stubbled skin, and a taste... a taste like anger and regret and wickedness, all edged with _good intentions_. 

John tasted like sin. John _was_ Sin.

There was a moment of resistance, of John's body stiffening against Manny, his hands firmly on Manny's shoulders, tense and ready to shove him bodily away. And then the softest of sounds cut through the buzzing, the thundering of blood through Manny's head...

_A sigh._

John relaxed against him, the soft sound of acquiescence running through Manny's body like an electric shock. He gripped John's coat harder, and heard his own sound of surrender as John's hands curved over Manny's shoulders, tugging him closer and holding him still. Manny may have been an inexpert kisser, unsure as to how exactly this part of the human dance went, but John played him like a fiddle, a clear student of the devil of pleasure himself. 

It was heady, the kiss. Intoxicating, breathtaking, and completely overwhelming. Manny teetered on the edge of something indefinable, something like a precipice or the infinite itself. All that lay between him and the threat of falling was John's hands, his lips, his breath, his body. 

All that he had lost: his connection to the divine, the infinite, the mystical and the unknown came rushing back, filling this faulty body with the sublime. 

And just as soon as that familiar feeling of the endlessness of the universe entered him, it was gone. John smiled at him, inches away, licking his lips and passing the back of one hand over his mouth.

"Well. That was a bit of alright, wasn't it?"

Manny blinked. A cold shiver ran up his spine. Was this all that humans had to cling to? Slivers of sublimity in the midst of loneliness, cut off from everything but temptation? No wonder they revelled in their weaknesses. Their wickedness. Their carnality. Their sin. 

Without the Voice of God in their ears, how were they to see the righteous path? 

Manny let go of John's lapels, dropped his hands to his sides, and bowed his head. 

"I can't live like this."

Somewhere on the pathways between dreaming and waking, between the embodied and the disembodied, Manny opened his eyes, flexed his wings, and felt horrible, terrifying relief.

***

" _...coraxo Oiad vnph._ " The sigil burned bright one last time, a brilliant cherry red, then faded away into nothing.

Somewhere deep in the labyrinth of the Old Mill House, in a room that existed between here and there, between mischief and mayhem, Constantine wiped away the last fragments of chalk and blood scrawled across the stone floor at his feet. Sure, it'd been a bit of a mess, a haphazard mishmash of sleep, embodiment and spirit contact spells, but he hadn't needed it to be water-tight. It was serviceable, and that was all he expected from it.

Still, it hadn't gone quite to plan.

John groaned softly as he rose up from his haunches, his calves protesting at the length of time he'd spent crouched and chanting. He slapped his palms together, then wiped the rest of the smeared blood and chalk on his trousers. He supposed the grab bag nature of what he had to admit was one of his more impulsive castings was to blame for the way it had all swerved in the middle.

All he'd wanted to do was meddle with God's Worst Messenger, the angel who gave the Royal Mail a run for its money in the "Sorry we missed you, but we really didn't bother to ring 'round anyway" Olympics. A little pressure, a little pain... Just a small reminder or two that he was a hair's breadth away from the sheep he pretended to shepherd, that there but for the grace of God he'd go. 

What he hadn't expected was for Manny to so thoroughly throw himself into his senses, and John did have to admit it was quite the coup to be able to add "Pulled an Angel" to his list of accomplishments. Right below "The World's Greatest Conman" and "Jack of All Trades," of course.

Yet there was something else that gnawed at him, like a maggot burrowing through to the apple's core. Something not quite right about the whole encounter, something slightly-off beyond Manny's near-understanding that he was under another's control. 

A stain, perhaps, just the slightest hints of dark edges, possibly nothing more than a reflection of John's own soul. Something that didn't quite smell or taste right, something with the flavour of brimstone, something that made the bile rise in the back of John's throat, even as he couldn't quite pin the source of it down.

But with nothing to go on, there was little for John to do just now. He'd consult whatever books he could get his hands on, keep his ears open and his eyes peeled. He'd watch Manny and exercise a little bit of prudence, since it'd do no one any good to act against an angel until he had a better sense of whether he'd be facing a Heavenly Host or a Hellish Horde. 

Watch and wait. That's what John would do. Whatever lay in the dark would eventually have to rise into the light. So that's what he'd do. Watch. And wait.

_And wait._

Against the ending of the world.


End file.
